Times’ reporters Adam Goldman and Michael Schmidt reported that FBI leadership panicked over Trump claiming in an NBC interview that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation and some of Trump’s foreign policy actions.

But this story flies in the face of previous reporting from last April which revealed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told Trump’s legal team that the President was not the target of the Mueller probe.

The FBI opened the counterintelligence investigation into the President after Comey was fired in early May.

By May 17 – just days after Comey’s termination – Mueller was appointed special counsel.

Many experts believe Mueller absorbed the counterintelligence investigation into his probe.